The land lifted here, and they could sense the solid mass of the mountains ahead. They made camp in a dry wash that ran down to the river. The depression shielded them from view, and there were no trees on its slopes, but from weariness as much as caution they did not light a fire. They were chilled and their clothes were wet as they saw to their mounts and ate their rations cold. Yet sentries had to be set. Each pair would stand guard for two hours. Although exhausted, he had volunteered for the first watch. He needed time to think.
Valens had earned his grudging respect. The young officer had faced down the mutiny after the death of Severus. He had imposed his will in going after the girl. During the rescue, Valens had played his part with courage, and had overseen the retreat with brisk efficiency. The callow youth of Zeugma had been toughened by the tribulations of the hard journey. He even looked different. He was leaner, stood taller, and moved with the growing assurance of command.
Murena had said that Valens was a broken reed. Young and inexperienced, he had turned to drink after the murder of his parents. There was no doubt that Valens would snap under pressure. Murena had been wrong. For all his experience and cunning, for all the information and contacts at his disposal, Murena was a bad judge of character. How could it be otherwise? The commander of the frumentarii lived in a world of lies and suspicion. No disinterested informant ever came forward. Every one denounced others, hoping to be rewarded. The soldiers themselves existed to uncover treachery – and found it wherever they looked. Innocuous conversations and letters were twisted to reveal malign intent. Immersed in a climate of untruth, all thoughts became tainted. Innocence was seen as stupidity, virtue as a condemnation of those in authority.
He had come to detest Murena, loathe the profession in which he himself served. Like a tide of filth, it undermined the foundations of anything good in his character. And now it threatened the only part of his life that had remained inviolate.
Marriage had come belatedly for him. At most weddings the man was in his late twenties, the girl fourteen or fifteen. His bride had been a little older, just turned nineteen. But he had been approaching forty. The days when it was illegal for a soldier to marry had long gone. Yet previously the demands of his service somehow had precluded thoughts of matrimony, and, of course, he had not met the right woman.
Tullia was the daughter of a vintner. The family poor, but respectable. Her father’s trade had been their introduction. He had been buying wine – a moderately astringent Sabine white, good for the pain he was beginning to feel in his joints – and she had been helping in the shop. Their courtship had been unhurried and formal. That he was a soldier was obvious, but, to avoid alarming her family, he had given out merely that he was in Rome on detached duty from his legion. After their marriage he had been happy to rent an apartment close to her father’s business in the Subura. Of course, some of its streets were unsafe after dark, but it was foolish to venture down many streets in Rome at night. Tullia brought him joy, and had given him a daughter.
To begin with, Murena’s threats had been indirect. At the meeting in that cramped, dusty office he had listened with mounting apprehension as Murena had revealed his knowledge of his family: their names and ages, Tullia’s relatives, their occupations, where they lived, and the state of their finances. If he undertook this mission, saw it through to success, he would be lavishly rewarded. The family would be financially secure for the next generation. Of course if he refused, things would be different. He had watched in horror as Murena had got out the account books of the camp. The evidence could not be argued away. His career would be over, and Tullia’s family ruined.
After he had accepted the mission, and been told what it entailed, Murena was less subtle. Should he either fail or betray his orders, he would be classed as a traitor. The family of a man convicted of maiestas were also held to be guilty of treason. The implications of that did not need spelling out.
He huddled his cloak around himself. His boots and trousers were still clammy. A chill wind had got up in the west. It was cold sitting here just below the skyline.
There had been no way out, nothing for it but to betray his comrades. Unlike the bandits, the Arabs had been purely fortuitous. If the raid on their encampment had gone wrong, it could have been the end of the expedition. He had trusted in his horse and his skill at arms to get him clear of the disaster. Last-stand heroics did not feature in his thinking. There was money in his belt, and he spoke Aramaic. It was not far back to the Tigris. Get across Mesopotamia and he would be back in the empire.
Against the odds, they had all got away unscathed. Once the nomads were on their trail, he had dropped a couple of bits of equipment to mark their route. In retrospect he was glad that Valens had seen the water bottle and had taken the rear, which had prevented him leaving any further signs. Drawing the tent-dwellers down on them might have fulfilled his orders, but what use was that if he himself did not survive?
Now the Arabs were left behind, some new scheme was necessary. What would happen should Valens meet with some misfortune? There was no formal second in command. All of the men thought the whole venture ill-advised. Several openly wished to abandon the mission. With Valens gone, most likely there would be much heated debate, and then the expedition would break up in acrimony. Once separated, it might be possible to ensure that few, if any, of its number made it back to Zeugma.
Someone was scrambling up from the dry watercourse. His watch was over. The hours had passed quickly. He rose, grunting with the effort, and tried to stretch some of the ache out of his muscles and arthritic joints. Hercules’s hairy arse, I’m tired.
‘Libertas,’ he gave the challenge.
‘Pietas,’ came the response.
As if called by his evil imaginings, Valens walked up the incline.
The sentry felt the hilt in his hand. A couple of rapid movements and the unsuspecting young officer would be dead. There would be no outcry. All finished in a moment.
Not now. He forced himself to relax, release the hold on his weapon. The river was not deep enough to bear away the body. Anyway, the disappearance could not be explained.
‘Don’t move!’ Valens hissed.
Guiltily, his hand moved back to the hilt.
‘Quiet!’ Valens’s head was tipped to one side. ‘Hear that?’
The sentry cocked his head, straining to listen. At first there was nothing but the wind singing in his ears. Then he heard a faint sound carried on the breeze. Deep in his reflections, he had not heard it before.
They both stood, as if turned to stone.
It came again. A snatch of guttural conversation.
‘The Arabs,’ said Valens.
CHAPTER 17
Adiabene
THE CANYON WAS A DEAD END. If the nomads had followed their tracks, and had seen the discreet signs he had left, when they arrived they would know that the Romans were trapped.
The slopes were no more than forty foot at their highest. They were not so steep that an active man could not scale them with care. But the climber, exposed on the rock face, would be an easy target for an archer. For a man on horseback there was only one way in and out. Some forty paces wide at its entrance, the canyon narrowed to just ten paces towards the far end, where a landslide had fallen from one of the walls. Apart from the jumble of rocks, the floor of the canyon was bare of any cover.
The Romans had corralled their animals behind the ramp of tumbled rocks, but their camp was in front, out in the open, unprotected by the terrain. No sentry had been posted at the entrance to the canyon. Valens had issued the instructions. The arrangement was not ideal – obviously it would have been far better had there been some other way out – but it suited his intentions.
When they had realised that the tent-dwellers were still on their trail, they had moved out quietly, and without fuss. They had ridden through that night, and on into the next afternoon. Daylight had revealed the jagged peaks of the Taurus Mountains ranged ahead, until the foothills closed in
on the river valley, and blocked the view. The following day Valens had discarded the first piece of equipment to draw the Arabs after them, and sent Hairan in advance to find the sort of position the Romans now occupied.
There was nothing to do but wait. It would be dawn in an hour or two. Valens sat partly concealed by a boulder from the landslide. Shutting one eye, so as to not ruin his night vision, he squinted at the campfire. By its light he could see the huddled shapes wrapped in cloaks, the glint of metal helmets laid aside, little piles of gear and baggage: a defenceless encampment of the exhausted and unsuspecting.
When he had explained his plan, the men had raised no objections. The nomads were not going to give up. Most likely the Arabs were travelling light, and had spare mounts. The Romans could not outrun them. Something else was necessary.
The woman Lucia had asked for a knife. If things went wrong, evidently she had no intention of falling into the hands of the tent-dwellers again. Valens had dithered. Part of his uncertainty stemmed from not having a spare knife. If he lost his sword, selfishly he had no wish to find himself unarmed. And it was a terrible thing that she asked. The decision was taken from him by Zabda. The Palmyrene had produced a blade hidden in his boot. With a courtly bow of his balding head, he had handed it over, hilt first. Since the rescue he had remained close to Lucia, often talking to her reassuringly in Aramaic. The solicitude was unexpected given his normal behaviour.
Valens glanced back to where Lucia was resting by the corral. Surely sleep would be out of the question. The rockfall hid her from view. Decimus was down there too. Certainly the horse master would not be sleeping. The animals were saddled and ready, their tethered reins close to Decimus’s grasp. Speed in mounting was essential. Everything would depend on timing.
Peering among the boulders around him, Valens could just make out Iudex, sitting cross-legged, his arms stiffly down at his sides. Valens could not see if his eyes were open. Perhaps he was meditating, or communing with his strange god. More than once Iudex had claimed that his spirit could leave his body, could range far and wide across the world, had even journeyed to the underworld. Possessed of such abilities, it was disappointing that Iudex had been unable to discern just how close behind the nomads had been.
Clemens and Zabda were a little further off, and completely hidden among the rocks. Valens had chosen who was to stay with care. The armourer Clemens was said to be the finest swordsman in the party. Iudex and Zabda had shown their metal in the raid. Decimus was necessary for the horses.
Well before last light, Aulus had led Narses and Hairan away. A trained hunter, brought up in the central highlands of Gaul, Aulus was accustomed to mountains. On his skills, and those of the two easterners, rested the survival of those in the canyon.
Were the stars fading? Valens wanted this night to end. The waiting was hard. He shivered. Without his cloak, he was cold. But he knew he was shivering with fear. With numb fingers, he fumbled a piece of dried meat from the pouch on his belt. To prevent his teeth chattering, he put it in his mouth, and chewed mechanically. For the umpteenth time, he obsessively ran his hands over his weapons.
In his mind’s eye he saw the wicked glitter of Zabda’s knife as he presented it to Lucia. Not many women killed themselves with a blade. Like slaves, they tended to use poison, or hang themselves. One summer, when Valens had been a child at the family villa on the Bay of Naples, a slave girl had drowned herself in the well. His mother had been upset, and not just by the loss of her property. She had been fond of the girl. The reaction of his father had been anger. He had fulminated against her selfishness. It would be an age before water could be drawn from the well. The foolish superstitions of the other slaves would make them reluctant ever to use it again. He had insisted repeatedly that the girl could have had no reason for the act, no reason whatsoever.
After the murder of his parents, the thought of taking his own life had occurred to Valens in the depths of his misery. Insane sects like the Christians might claim that pre-empting the will of the gods was a sin, but there were many sound Roman precedents. In the old days of the free republic falling on one’s sword had been honourable. Facing defeat, rather than endure the shame of being taken prisoner, many a soldier had turned his blade on himself. His initial attempt foiled by his friends, Cato the Younger had ripped out the stitches binding his wounds, and with bare hands had torn out his own innards. Even such agony had been better than the shame of being executed by Caesar, or, much worse, enduring the ignominy of being pardoned.
The rule of the Emperors had raised the rituals of self-inflicted death to the status of a cult. A condemned man invited his friends to a meal. Over the food he calmly discussed weighty and relevant issues, such as the immortality of the soul. After taking leave of his companions, with the same composed and cheerful demeanour, he retired to a bath. There a slave opened his veins. The steam and warm water were said to lessen the pain. Some would order the incisions temporarily bound up, so that they could dictate a short work of improving philosophy, before their lifeblood drained away.
Of course, such deaths were done for the family. If a man pre-empted trial and conviction, it was possible that the Emperor would not confiscate his estate. If you took your own life, your wife and children might not be reduced to destitution, might not be judged implicated in your real or imagined treason.
After he lost his parents, Valens had tried to fortify himself with the principles of Epicurus. If suffering overwhelmed the pleasure of life, it was logical and right to end the misery of existence. But the philosophy had not taken deep root in Valens’s soul, and he had come to acknowledge that self-pity was not the same as true pain. There was an irony in looking back. Then he had wanted to kill himself, now he was terrified to die.
The stars were paling, the sky lightening. It should not be long.
What waited after the coin was placed in the dead jaws, after the earth was sprinkled on the corpse, or beyond the flames of the pyre? An eternity of regret, of envy of the living? Perhaps best if the Epicureans were correct, if at last all returned to sleep and quiet.
Something alerted Valens. He saw and heard nothing, but he detected a presence at the mouth of the canyon. He sniffed the air like an animal, but smelt nothing. Despite the chill, he was sweating.
Valens looked over at Iudex. The great domed hairless head had not moved. If his spirit-twin was roaming, it had better return fast.
The blue of the sky was assuming a delicate pink hue. The sun would rise soon. There were no clouds, and not a breath of wind.
A small movement by the cliff at the opening of the ravine, half glimpsed then gone.
They were here.
Let us be men, Valens said to himself.
It had taken no great foresight to judge that the nomads would attack just before dawn, when most men were deeply asleep. Conticinium, the time when birds and animals woke, but men still slumbered. If men were awake, they were at their lowest ebb in mind and body. It was the best time to fall on your enemy, perhaps take him unaware.
If it was a scout that Valens had glimpsed, he would have gone back to report. Valens imagined their low and urgent deliberations. All the gods, let them make their move soon.
The sky was getting lighter by the moment, visibility increasing.
If they decided to besiege the Romans in the canyon . . . No, they would not do that. The tent-dwellers lacked the patience and the stamina. One quick rush was the limit of their tactics. Survive that and their courage drained away. Everyone knew that they had no discipline, would not stand close to the steel for long. Dear gods, let that be true.
Valens heard them before he saw them. A muted rumble of hooves on the hard ground.
His fingers were clumsy with apprehension as he untied the laces of his bow case. As he fumbled, part of him cursed his caution. Yet the damp of the night air might have loosened the string of his bow had it not been protected. At last the weapon came free. The smooth leather of the grip calmed him a fraction
. Opening his quiver, he selected and nocked an arrow.
The noise swelled, echoing back off the walls.
The first rays of the sun struck the western lip of the cliff.
Down in the lingering gloom, a murky shape flowed into the entrance to the canyon a couple of hundred paces from where he waited.
Valens got into position, half screened by the boulders.
They were coming fast. In the gathering light, individual riders emerged from the dark mass; men on horses, taller figures on camels. Thirty, perhaps forty of them, too many to count.
Valens part drew his bow.
A hundred paces. The thunder of their coming filled the canyon.
Surely now they must notice the lack of movement in the camp.
Valens’s left arm was trembling with the strain. Everything in his being screamed to shoot, to get this over. He did not move.
Fifty paces out, the nomads yelled their war cry. The ululating and unearthly sound was terrifying. Valens fought the urge to turn and run. Scrambling up the rocks offered no safety, only certain death. A coward dies a thousand times, a brave man only once.
The tent-dwellers swept into the camp. Long lances stabbed down at the humped shapes in cloaks. When they failed to bite into flesh, the Arabs finally realised the deception. They had been duped into slaughtering rocks and sacks masked by cloaks into the forms of sleeping men. Their war cry died to be replaced by a jabber of angry and alarmed shouts. The nomads were hauling on their reins. Horses and camels milled in confusion.
From high above came the call of a hunting horn.
The bearded faces of the tent-dwellers looked up.
The first arrow from the heights took one of them in the shoulder. He reeled, clutching the wound. An incredible shot into the shadowed ravine. It could only be Narses. More shafts hissed down. A horse reared as it was hit. Spear discarded, desperately its rider clung to its mane.
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